Greene Abstract

Title: Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment

Abstract: Traditional theories of moral psychology emphasize
reasoning and “higher cognition,” while more recent work
emphasizes the role of emotion.  I will present behavioral and
brain imaging data that support a model of moral judgment
according to which both “cognitive” and emotional processes
play crucial and sometimes mutually competitive roles.  I will
discuss a replication and extension of a previous finding that
judgments in response to “personal” moral dilemmas involve
increased social-emotional processing while judgments in
response to “impersonal” moral dilemmas involve increased
“cognitive” processing.  Further results indicate that brain
regions associated with cognitive control are recruited to
resolve difficult personal moral dilemmas in which utilitarian
values require personal moral violations.  I will also discuss a
brain region in the right anterior prefrontal cortex that tracks
inter-trial differences in moral judgment behavior, exhibiting
greater activity for utilitarian, as compared to anti-utilitarian,
judgments.   I interpret these data to suggest that the
controversy surrounding utilitarian moral philosophy may
reflect an underlying tension between competing cognitive
subsystems in the brain.